


The Posh Boy and The Dominatrix

by greymissed



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-16 02:33:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14802716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greymissed/pseuds/greymissed
Summary: A series of short, unconnected Sherlock/Irene drabbles.Chapter 6: You try not to think about the fact that The Woman in your Mind Palace is always either clothed in something of yours or in nothing at all.





	1. Dinner?

He can sometimes go for weeks without thinking of her. Usually this only happens when he is absorbed in a case, something new and intriguing and with a solution that, he knows, presently lies just beyond the grasp of his mind. Then he is focused – John says obsessed – and very little will shake his thoughts from the case at hand.

 

But then something will happen that triggers a response – a whiff of someone wearing her perfume, for instance, or the staccato clack of high heels in a particular rhythm, or the sight of a usually shut window cracked open – and his mind, usually a steel trap, is laid open to assault.

 

It manifests itself in different ways.

 

He may find himself thinking of her with greater and greater regularity – at first, perhaps, simply a flash of her walking by unexpectedly in his Mind Palace. And then Mind Palace Her telling him things about where she’s been since they’d separated. Left unchecked, such thoughts would slowly increase in frequency and volume until he is doing inane things like wondering, in the midst of an examination in the morgue or tracking a suspect in the London Underground, and with a fixation which utterly baffles him, what she might be doing right this moment, or what she thinks of the recent Royal Wedding.

 

Or it could flood him like the bursting of a dam, catapulting him into an onslaught of memories – her standing over him with a whip, her voice low and commanding; her asleep in his bed, lashes resting against her cheeks; her raising her chin at him, eyes glinting with challenge; her kneeling on the sandy floor in a deserted warehouse in Karachi, typing out what she’d thought was her last message to the world; her kneeling in front of him, in entirely different circumstances…

 

Almost inevitably it gets to a point where he can’t get his mind to stop thinking about her, so much so that it affects his sleep and his work, and even John notices that he is more bristly and distracted than usual. Like the time he’d had the most inconvenient dreams – and daydreams – about her for four days in a row before he’d thrown in the towel. In such cases there is only one thing he can do to stop it.

 

Scratch the itch.

 

He whips out his mobile phone, annoyed that it has come to this. Again. He wonders if she isn’t aware of it, if she hasn’t somehow engineered it. He’s not sure how – but The Woman can be very devious. He wouldn’t put it past her to plant suggestions of her presence simply in order to provoke a reaction from him.

 

He types in a single word, hits send, and goes to bed without waiting for a response – after all, it is already 2am in Tunisia, and he will need his energy for the flight and the days ahead.

 


	2. Chemistry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What is it about The Woman? Sherlock ponders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set around the beginning of His Last Vow.

~

_What is it about The Woman?_

 

Sherlock ponders this as he watches Janine shut the front door behind her and turn to walk down Baker Street. She looks up, sees him and waves, seeming perfectly delighted at having caught him watching her out the window. She has apparently already all but forgotten his snub this evening.

 

He doesn’t usually do this. The only reason he is watching her as she leaves is that he is observing, trying to figure out what makes her so different from The Woman. What is it about her that earlier this evening had made him, even while trying to keep up this charade, unable and unwilling to take their relationship to the next level, so to speak, when he has succumbed all too often – though not without a great deal of resistance on his part – when it comes to The Woman?

 

Though the question should more appropriately be – what makes The Woman so different? Not just from Janine but from Mrs Hudson and Molly and Sally and all the girls he’d ever made acquaintance with in school and the women he’s come across in his entire lifetime of experience? And what is it about The Woman that makes him – who, for much of his life, has easily been able to resist things like sentiment and temptations of the flesh – so susceptible?

 

It isn’t just her cleverness – goodness knows he’s met plenty of terribly smart, learned women, but none of them have intrigued him or drawn him in the way The Woman has. Neither is it her particular brand of intelligence nor her manner of displaying it, more street-smart insouciance than book smart – though he suspects she does not lack in the latter as well.

 

And obviously The Woman is very attractive, but that is neither here nor there. He has come across plenty of attractive people in London, and none of them has made him so much as bat an eyelid.

 

And it can’t be her penchant for misbehavior and her utter lack of apology for the same. He sets no store by rules, but neither does he feel particularly drawn to the idea of breaking them; it is acceptable and even charming in her case only because she is The Woman and he cannot imagine her any other way.

 

It isn’t just the fact that she’d beaten him either. Although he recalls with some fondness the memory of The Woman trailing a whip against his cheek and telling him to remember her as the woman who’d beat him, the fact is that he had ultimately outwitted her by figuring out the passcode to her phone, and he considers them equals. Further, Jim Moriarty had outwitted him numerous times, and Sherlock only had the utmost revulsion for him.

 

Perhaps it is all of the above put together?

 

After all is said and done, he cannot figure it out, and it bothers him so much that he goes so far as to raise the topic with John. Not in so many words, of course.

 

“What is it about Mary?” John repeats, wrinkling his nose as if he’d never considered the question before, or at least had never expected it to come from Sherlock. “Look, if this is some sort of indictment on her person---”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous, John, it’s nothing like that. I simply want to know what it is about Mary you find so… appealing. You’ve gone out with 14 women, and have come across many more in your lifetime. Each would have had specific characteristics, values and qualities in varying degrees, or quirks unique to themselves, that set them apart from other women you’d met. What was it about Mary that made you decide to marry her?” He had always dismissed these sorts of conversations as a whole load of nonsense, but since falling prey to such nonsense himself he feels he ought to learn a bit more.

 

When John doesn’t immediately reply, he prompts, “How does it work? Clever – 20 points; likes dogs – 15 points; bad at sports – minus 5 points? And each of these accorded weight based on your personal preferences, I suppose.”

 

John is staring at him incredulously. “It’s not mathematics, Sherlock. Life isn’t a problem sum, you know, much as you probably would like it to be.” He pauses, glances at the ceiling as if he can’t believe they’re having this conversation. But he tentatively offers, “Mary is smart and funny and kind. But it’s more… chemistry, I suppose.”

 

“Chemistry?” Sherlock latches on to the word. Chemistry is something he understands. He is first and foremost a chemist, after all. “Are you referring to the effect of pheromones? I’ve read the academic papers. I don’t belie—”

 

John seems somewhat taken aback. “I don’t mean… it’s got nothing to do with the periodic table or anything like that. Although perhaps the analogy is apt.” He casts his gaze about the room, as if trying to locate the words to explain this. “When two chemicals come together, they react in a certain way. Sometimes nothing happens, sometimes they turn into something else, and sometimes there’s an explosion.”

 

“That’s an over-simplifi—”

 

“It’s an _analogy_. What I’m trying to say is that it’s the same when two people come together – they can go really well together or they may have no reaction to each other. When there’s a spark – a _something_ – between them, that’s chemistry.”

 

He understands that, somewhat. Chemistry is elements and atoms and things working and reacting in predictable ways. But nothing about his interactions with The Woman can be said to have been predictable though. Nor can she. He and The Woman are definitely _reactive_ to each other, and he and Janine not so much (at least, not so much on his part), but none of that explains the _why_. He’d once told The Woman that the chemistry of love was incredibly simple, and at the time his knowledge of the physiological symptoms of attraction had been key in cracking The Woman’s passcode. But the physical manifestation of attraction – which he’s well familiar with – is not what he’s trying to understand now. “Well, what creates that _something_ , as you so eloquently put it?”

 

“There’s no formula for it. To be honest it can sometimes be a mystery, really, why two people are suited for each other… Why are you asking me this now, though? Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate before Mary and I were married?” He trails off, deep in thought, but from the way he suddenly looks intently at Sherlock, something seems to have just dawned on him. “This is about Janine, isn’t it? Things are getting serious, then?”

 

“I’m just curious,” Sherlock declares, deciding against correcting his friend and sidestepping the issue.

 

“You know after Irene Adler… left for America I was concerned that, uh, you know. You’d be heartbroken. But everything’s worked out well now, hasn’t it? Janine is lovely--”

 

“Heartbroken?” Sherlock scoffs. “What’s there to be heartbroken about? I barely knew her,” he says, wondering if the words aren’t tumbling too quickly from his mouth. He cannot deny to himself now, of course, that The Woman is of some significance to him, but was it really so obvious that even John noticed then?

 

“Oh, come on. You liked her.”

 

“I found her intelligence refreshing after having to deal with idiots all day.”

 

“You were an absolute wreck when you thought she was dead.”

 

“That’s a gross exaggeration.”

 

“You kept her text alert.”

 

“As a reminder of a worthy opponent.”

 

“You’ve had many worthy opponents.”

 

“None like The Woman. She’s in a league of her own.”

 

True as they are, his words seem to cause John some discomfort. John opens his mouth as if he wants to say something – no doubt thinking about whether to come clean about what Mycroft had told him about The Woman’s death – but then decides against it. “Whatever the case is, that’s all in the past. I suppose you’ve found a similar understanding with Janine.”

 

This is evidently not what John had been intending to say. But no matter. He decides against correcting his friend. Better let him think what he likes, than to run the risk of John prying and somehow learning that The Woman is still alive. “An understanding?”

 

“Yes. You know, uh, what people sometimes refer to as “ _being on the same wavelength_ ”? That’s physics now, but…”

 

Sherlock has to resist the urge inform him that scientifically speaking, it would be more accurate to say “being on the same _frequency_ ”. But perhaps John is on to something. Not with Janine, obviously, but The Woman.

 

He’s always thought that perhaps some part of his attraction to her is that she represents what he likes – a mystery. But for all that she remains a mystery to him, they have always shared an understanding. They have never needed words to communicate – even at their first meeting, she’d known that he would be able to work out the passcode to her safe. He’d understood her non-verbal warning about the loaded gun hidden therein. Thereafter, receiving her phone at Christmas, he’d understood exactly what she’d wanted to convey, just as she’d known he would. Their escape from the terrorist cell in Karachi was nothing short of miraculous, and filled with such instances of perfect understanding.

 

She is probably thousands of miles away, and still understands him better than any other human being probably ever would, even though text messages can only convey so much.

 

That level of understanding is – for lack of a better word – comforting, though it does not always translate into accord, for neither he nor The Woman are the sort to take instructions, least of all from each other. Perhaps it is this constant tug of war between understanding and mystery that keeps things interesting.

 

He finds that he suddenly wishes she were here, with him, in London. That it were her, rather than Janine, who’d tried to coax him out of his pants earlier this evening. 213 days. That’s how long ago it’s been since he last set eyes on The Woman. There is an unfamiliar ache in his gut that has nothing to do with what he’s eaten that day. It is, of course, impossible for The Woman to come to London, but it doesn’t stop him from wanting it.

 

His fingers reach unthinkingly for his phone before he realizes that John is still in the room, and talking to him. “… Anyway, I’m glad you’ve found Janine. She’s definitely way more normal than Irene Adler.”

 

“You say that like it’s a good thing,” Sherlock mutters, aware that perhaps he shouldn’t be too quick to disparage Janine, who is _acceptable_ , and whom he’s supposed to be dating.

 

“Sorry?”

 

“Nothing. Thank you, John, this has been very helpful,” he says, dismissing him without further explanation.

 

 _He runs his fingers over the keys of his phone for a second before he pockets it with some regret. When all this is over,_ he thinks. When Charles Augustus Magnussen has been dealt with, when he no longer has to keep up this charade – drugs and Janine and his resumed life in London, irrevocably altered by John’s marriage. If The Woman can’t come to London, then he’ll have to go to her, wherever she is. 

 


	3. Fantasy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something from Irene's POV this time. I'd love to hear what you think!

For someone whose former profession traded heavily in fantasies, Irene Adler is not big on them herself. Oh, she has dreams, of course, but they are more in the nature of concrete plans and goals – nothing unrealistic, everything entirely within her reach should she play her cards right.

 

And they are of nothing she does not want. Growing up, she never had fantasies of the perfect wedding nor of a quiet house with a tidy little garden in the countryside. No, she dreamed of the sheer joy of freedom and the power of manipulation and the exhilaration of misbehavior. She dreamed not so much of governments falling at her feet as the rush of joy in knowing that she could make that happen if she wanted.

 

Even now as her hands are bound and she awaits certain death, having exhausted her various plans for escape, she does not dream of Prince Charming riding in on a white horse to save her.

 

After all, she is no princess – only a fallen angel who has always had to make things happen for herself – and the man she wants is no Prince Charming but a gatekeeper on the side of the angels.

 

Instead, her dreams are full of eyes of the clearest blue, eyes that haunt her sleep and her waking hours. Eyes that don’t say _I forgive you_ or _forgive me_ or _let’s have dinner_ , but which search her own blue ones, dark and intent as on the night he’d ripped her life apart. Eyes that she will never gaze into again, with pupils she will never see dilated again.

 

_I would have burned for you,_ they say.

 

She does not dream of forgiveness or absolution. Instead, she dreams of the ghost of his fingers lingering on her wrist, as they had done that evening in his flat, trailing fire across the thin skin. In her dreams the intimacy of the gesture is real, the quiet tension of the moment not manufactured; in her dreams he is not simply taking her pulse.

 

He is not one for words like these or even emotions like these, but – _I would burn for you_ , the soft stroke of his fingers on her pulse say.

 

For without the words having ever been spoken, she knows he had trusted her. He had not given her nor her phone up to the authorities when he’d found out she wasn’t dead. And she in turn had trusted him not to.

 

For all the sentiment that had developed unexpectedly between them, in the end they’d both betrayed each other, though he had the excuse of only having acted in kind.

 

This is her punishment then. Death in obscurity. Goals: unmet. Fantasies: none.

 

_Dinner?_ It is after all her very last night on earth. She might have asked it of him again had things not turned out this way. Instead, her last words to him are simply – _Goodbye, Mr Holmes._ He will know what she means. He always has. She refuses to feel anything like regret.

 

She does not dream of Prince Charming riding in on a white horse to save her, but once in a long, long while, reality is better than fantasy.

 

His horse is a grey Nissan Sunny and he wears black robes instead of a cape, but he wields a sword as skillfully as any warrior prince, and his eyes – his eyes are impossibly blue.


	4. Home

You stand on the balcony of your suite in Paris, wrapped in nothing but a bathrobe. The air is sharp with autumn chill but you are used to London winters and this is nothing.

 

Your gaze falls on a man walking down the street, amidst the tourists and the street vendors and the dog walkers.

 

Tall and lithe. Dark brown curls. Sharply dressed under a wool coat. Cheekbones that could cut glass.

 

He is walking hand in hand with a woman. Long brown hair tied up in a ponytail, pretty features, slim built. Sweet looking. Dressed in a drab sweater and jeans combo. They are strolling, an umbrella hanging from the free arm of the woman.

 

Your heart clenches, just a little, at the sight. You can’t tear your eyes away, try as you might.

 

Lovers in Paris. How trite.

 

They pause outside a boulangerie. The woman disappears inside for a minute and emerges with a paper bag. They share a croissant as they watch the tourist boats float down the River Seine. He runs his hand across her face, presumably brushing off crumbs. She laughs, and her smile is open, innocent.

 

You are not that girl. You will never be that girl. Good-natured, guileless, content with simple things.

 

The woman stops to pet a stray cat, cooing as the man looks on indulgently. Shortly thereafter they cross the street and walk on, past a bookshop and a greengrocers. Your eyes linger on them until they are no longer in sight, their linked hands a symbol of all that is out of your reach.

 

You will never have that life. Carefree, uncomplicated. Safe.

 

A hand comes to rest against the small of your back. “Selecting your next victim?”

 

You smile without turning, leaning into the warmth of the hand. “You’re hardly a victim.”

 

“Says the woman who threatened to make me beg twice.”

 

“You _did_ beg twice.”

 

“I _beg_ ,” he says, “To differ.”

 

“I saw a man,” you begin abruptly, wondering where you are going with this, and feel the minute tensing of fingers against your waist. Of course he will think you are in danger. It’s not improbable. You are never really out of danger. “He looked remarkably like you. Or like you normally look,” you correct, for he has given up his signature dark curls and Belstaff for a few days. “From a distance.”

 

“Anyone can look like anyone from a distance,” he scoffs, affronted. “Looks are easy to replicate, but I assure you I’m one of a kind.”

 

“That you are,” you agree.

 

For a while the both of you simply stand there surveying the streets, occasionally interrupting the comfortable silence to compare deductions about the people passing below.

 

When the sun finally begins to dip past the horizon you turn to him. “What time’s your train?”

 

“6.30.” He pauses. “Irene—”

 

“You know I can’t.” You won’t let him say it, as he has each time you’ve parted ways. You want it more than anything, except perhaps your life. There is no life for you in London. “I’ll be leaving Paris today as well.”

 

“Back to Sydney?”

 

“That,” you say, curling an arm around his neck and standing on tiptoe so you can whisper into his ear, “Is for me to know and for you to find out.”

 

You pull back to see that his eyes have darkened at the challenge.

 

“Text me,” you tell him, heading back into the room. You have a flight to catch.

 

“Till next time then,” he says, and this statement is so unprecedented you turn back to look at him.

 

Your eyes lock on his, and the word that comes to mind is _home_. That is what you feel, right now. And, at the same time, like you are standing on the edge of a precipice.

 

“Till next time,” you agree. This where the two of you are at, then – enjoying the stolen moments, and making commitments for the future, in your own way.

 

As you sit in the airport lounge waiting to board your plane, and your mobile phone alerts you to the text you’ve just received containing a single word – “ _Singapore?_ ” – your mind flits back to the man and the woman walking hand in hand along the river, in a world of their own, blissfully unaware. Ordinary.

 

You will never have that, it’s true – but perhaps you’d rather have this.


	5. Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His thoughts inevitably turn to her at Christmastime.

His thoughts inevitably turn to her at Christmastime.

 

Five Christmases ago, he’d received her phone wrapped in paper the shade of her lipstick. He’d gazed at her dead body on a slab and accepted a cigarette from Mycroft. He’d gone home and played the violin, watching the dawn break over London while shoppers began their frenzied start on the Boxing Day sales.

 

Four Christmases ago, having entered the realm of the dead, he was making a living as a busker in Monte Carlo and slowly unraveling the threads of Moriarty’s web. The Christmas trees lit up all around the city, with their red and gold baubles, evoked musings about the Woman. He wondered whether she was still alive and whether she had heard the news about his death. Whether she thought about their time together in Karachi or ever thought about him at all. He’d just decided to shut such dangerous thoughts away in a locked room in his Mind Palace when he heard a sigh issue from his phone. The text read: “Merry Christmas. Tell me you’re not dead.”

 

Three Christmases ago, they’d spent Christmas together. It was not out of any ridiculous sentiment – their paths had crossed in Serbia sometime in mid-December, and they’d decided to travel around the region together for the time being. It was safer travelling as a couple, and the Woman had valuable information he’d need to get rid of the last strands of Moriarty’s web. At least, that was what he told himself. It didn’t hurt that he enjoyed her company.

 

Two Christmases ago, he was back in London, a city he’d missed as sorely as the people in it, a city where the streets were now covered in snow rather than dust. He enjoyed the comfortable familiarity of spending Christmas at 221B Baker Street with John and Mary, Mrs Hudson, Lestrade and Molly, but he couldn’t help his thoughts from straying to the Woman. She’d gone off his radar a few weeks ago, and for all his vaunted skills and resources he couldn’t locate her. To some extent that was a comfort – it meant that she didn’t want to be found, and that she was not dead. And then he found a beautifully giftwrapped package on the mantelpiece. Red, the precise shade of the Woman’s lipstick, and roughly the same size as the package she’d given him several Christmases ago. It chilled him to the bone, until he opened it – and then he was struck by a different type of chill altogether. He didn’t need to piece the sonogram together to figure out that the Woman was pregnant with his child.

 

Last Christmas, he spent it drugging his family, John and Mary at his family home. He killed a man in cold blood, the man who had Mary’s and Irene’s histories catalogued in his Mind Palace and who had the means to expose them. A man who had the power to ruin the lives of those he, Sherlock, had sworn to protect and who thereby had the power to control him. Not anymore. As he lifted the gun he thought of Irene and their son, of John and Mary and the baby growing in Mary, and without hesitation he pulled the trigger.

 

This Christmas, he is in an undisclosed city in an undisclosed part of the world. His thoughts turn to her, as always, even though she is right beside him, asleep as their son Hamish is asleep. He wonders how much and how well she sleeps when he’s not around (and he knows the answer – not much and not well), and the wrenching feeling he gets in his gut looking at them now threatens to overwhelm him. Much has gone wrong in his life – Mary is dead, and John wants nothing to do with him – but he knows, for certain, that he has much to be thankful for.


	6. Mind Palace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You try not to think about the fact that The Woman in your Mind Palace is always either clothed in something of yours or in nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a very short drabble to scratch the Adlock itch!

Although The Woman in your Mind Palace takes many forms, she always sports a smirk, a smart comment never far from her lips. Her eyes speak of depths you could never hope to fathom. Her voice, low and lilting, sends tremors down your spine.

 

Always she resists, always she surprises. Ever the dominatrix.

 

Sometimes she appears wrapped in your Belstaff coat, reminiscent of the time you opened her safe, when you first learned what she could do with a gun and a syringe. That was the first passcode of hers you guessed, though she beat you that time as well. Though it never matters (not when it’s in your head), she’s wearing nothing underneath. John has insinuated that The Woman’s association with the Belstaff is why you put off sending it for dry-cleaning for so long after she’d returned it. He doesn’t know how close he is to the truth – you only sent it for dry-cleaning when you knew you’d see her again.

 

Sometimes she appears in your purple dressing gown, the one she wore the first time she slept in your bed. Like this she appears as she did then – hair down, makeup off, barefoot. More relaxed – but you know better, for The Woman is never not on guard. She whispers secrets into your ear, her lips just grazing your skin, and her eyes blaze with intent: “I would have you right here on this desk until you begged for mercy twice.”

 

Mostly, though, she shows up the way you first met her – without warning, and wearing nothing but five-inch black heels, diamond studs and a smile painted the shade of blood. Though your eyes do not wander below her neckline (at least, not in a majority of these thoughts), you know that The Woman in your Mind Palace sports the measurements 32-24-34. This is where she became, to you, not just a woman but The Woman.


End file.
